Bill

“There’s little room for moral qualms. After all, why should a dirt-poor Afghan farmer struggling to keep his family above the poverty line give a shit about a smack freak in the States who has thrown away more wealth than the farmer’s village is likely to see all year? Others rationalise that it may – just possibly – be used for medicine.”
― Toby Ralph, Ballots, Bullets & Kabulshit: An Afghan Election: Penguin Special

“China has a national economic strategy designed to create more and better jobs. We have global corporations designed to make money for their shareholders. No contest.”
― Robert B. Reich, Beyond Outrage (Expanded Edition): What has gone wrong with our economy and our democracy, and how to fix it

“Rudd claims to have had an ambitious five-part plan that he had wanted to take to the G20, whose members encompass 80 per cent of the world economy. The G20 had arrested the collapse of the world economy in 2009; now Rudd wanted it to restore it to health. The five points according to Rudd? Coordinate a green energy revolution, instigate a new agricultural revolution, increase efforts to raise people from poverty, boost the participation of women in the workforce, and urgently revive the long-paralysed new round of global trade liberalisation.”
― Peter Hartcher, The Adolescent Country: A Lowy Institute Paper: Penguin Special

“The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it’s a lie. I came from a country where race was not an issue; I did not think of myself as black and I only became black when I came to America. When you are black in America and you fall in love with a white person, race doesn’t matter when you’re alone together because it’s just you and your love. But the minute you step outside, race matters. But we don’t talk about it. We don’t even tell our white partners the small things that piss us off and the things we wish they understood better, because we’re worried they will say we’re overreacting, or we’re being too sensitive. And we don’t want them to say, Look how far we’ve come, just forty years ago it would have been illegal for us to even be a couple blah blah blah, because you know what we’re thinking when they say that? We’re thinking why the fuck should it ever have been illegal anyway? But we don’t say any of this stuff. We let it pile up inside our heads and when we come to nice liberal dinners like this, we say that race doesn’t matter because that’s what we’re supposed to say, to keep our nice liberal friends comfortable. It’s true. I speak from experience.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah